error with dumpkeys and setkeycodes

patitoconejita · 09-12-2005, 11:04 PM

I would highly appreciate some help with this one that has got me stuck
for some days now.

I'm trying to get functionality for 4 keys on my Microsoft Multimedia
Keyboard 1.0A. Using xev I found that all the other "extra" keys had
keycodes that I could easily bind to useful stuff through KDE. However,
the following keys didn't produce any output in xev: "My Pictures", "My
Music", "Messenger", and "Log Off", so I followed the advice in:

http://rick.vanrein.org/linux/funkey/

I found the scancodes for these keys (e064, e03c, e005, e016,
respectively) with dmesg, but when trying to find the free keycodes:

Code:

$ dumpkeys | grep ^keycode | grep =$
Couldn't get a file descriptor referring to the console

and the same with (assuming 240 is an available keycode):

Code:

$ setkeycodes e064 240
Couldn't get a file descriptor referring to the console

Googling for this yielded many results but were little related to this
case.

Any clues?

Cheers,

archtoad6 · 09-13-2005, 01:03 PM

Try doing it in a "real" console, i.e Ctrl+Alt+Fn, n = 1-6.

When I ran

Code:

dumpkeys | grep ^keycode | grep =$

in an xterm I got the same error msg. you did. When I ran it in a "real" console, I got the list of available codes.

patitoconejita · 09-13-2005, 01:40 PM

Yes, I had done that, but i think the dumpkeys you get when in console mode are different from those within your window manager, judging from the keycodes I know I have bound there.

At any rate, why are we getting the error message? Without understanding that, I'm not sure how I'll get those keys working.

Cheers,

archtoad6 · 09-13-2005, 03:23 PM

2 good points.

No other answers, will post if I come across more.